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Supreme Court: 24-hour clock to produce an accused before a magistrate starts at detention, not formal arrest
Ruling on four men held in a Tripura drugs case, the court said police cannot delay the constitutional deadline by recording the arrest hours after they first take someone into custody.
Key points
- The 24-hour limit under Article 22(2) runs from the moment a person is detained, the Supreme Court held.
- Four men in a Tripura NDPS case were held at 2 pm on 29 September 2025 but shown as arrested only at 11 am the next day.
- The court set aside the Tripura High Court's bail refusal and ordered their release on bail.
The Supreme Court on Thursday held that the 24-hour deadline to produce an accused before a magistrate runs from the moment of actual detention, not from the time police formally record an arrest.
A bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S Chandurkar ruled on appeals by four men who had been refused bail by the Tripura High Court in a case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. The four were detained at 2 pm on 29 September 2025 during a search and seizure, but were shown as arrested only at 11 am the next day.
The court said they should have been produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of the 2 pm detention. It set aside the High Court’s judgment and directed that they be released on bail, on conditions to be set by the Special Court.
No gap between detention and arrest
The bench said the words “arrested” and “detained” in Article 22(2) of the Constitution must be read together. It held that “any attempt to draw an artificial distinction between detention and arrest is constitutionally unsustainable.”
Treating the clock as starting only after search, seizure and formal arrest was, the judges said, “not only unsustainable in law but is entirely unconstitutional.” Time spent on inquiry or investigation before the formal arrest cannot be left out. The only exception, they said, is “the time necessary for the journey” to the magistrate.
The court also rejected the view that a short detention is not an arrest, saying a fundamental right cannot be suspended even briefly. A person held beyond 24 hours without being produced “must be released forthwith”.
What magistrates must now check
Magistrates are “duty-bound to record the actual date and time when the person’s liberty was curtailed” and must check the 24 hours from that point, the bench said. Meeting the deadline is not enough on its own: under Section 58 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, custody must also be reasonable, and a magistrate may refuse further remand if it is not.